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Butte, Montana: "The Richest Hill on Earth" Just driving through on I-90 today, you might not realize that Butte, Montana was once the industrial capital and the site of the largest mining bonanza in the West (Hudson 315). Driving on the local streets might give you more perspective. When gold was first struck in the Summit Valley district (Butte’s original name) in 1864, the town quickly escalated from a small spot on the map to nearly 5,000 in matter of three years. The “easy” gold and silver that was found in Butte was quickly extracted and by 1870, and open-pit silver mining peaked in 1887. 900 metric tons of silver were able to be mined and processed in a period of 10 years. During that time, Butte saw population fluctuations typical of mining boomtowns, dropping from 5,000 residents to 241 in 1870, back up to 3,000 in 1880 and eventually topping out near 100,000 residents in the early 20th century. It was home to the largest brothel in the United States as well as a red light district, and offered over 200 saloons for it thirsty residents. Today, the population hovers near 33,000. Evidence of its historical success can be seen simply by walking the streets. Butte itself was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and many of the buildings in the uptown area have been, or are being, restored. Nearly a dozen headframes are still in tact and scattered across the landscape, and the city boasts the World Museum of Mining. The Dumas Brothel is now operated as a museum, but was the longest running brothel in the United States, being shut down officially in 1982. Geology Butte's mineral wealth is a product of its geologic history . Western Montana was once the site of subduction activity, much like that in Washington and Oregon today. Oceanic-crust sunk below the continental-crust boundary 78 million years ago, allowing magma to reach the surface of the earth. The magma that remained underground formed the large north-south running Idaho Batholith and smaller Boulder Batholith. The former stretches nearly 200 miles in length and 75 miles in width. It is easily recognizable as the craggy granite peaks that make up the north end of the Bitteroot Range. The salt and pepper appearance of the rock is a result of the mineral composition of the granite, a mix of hornblende and biotite mica and plagioclase and quartz. The Boulder Batholith is exposed at the surface as granite and runs 90 mile long and 40 miles wide. Butte sits on its southwestern boundary. Cooling magma that crystallized here formed the veins of copper, gold, silver and other minerals and elements that Butte became known for. Copper Kings Considered a nuisance to those extracting silver and gold, copper would ultimately become the ore that would put the city on the map. First mined commercially in Butte in 1864, it had little value due the transportation costs for processing in Baltimore, and further processing in Blackhawk, Colorado. The first of Butte’s “Copper Kings,” William Clark, arranged to have a smelter built in Butte in order to make the copper in his mines more feasible for extraction. With a local production facility for ore processing, Butte’s copper industry gained momentum (Jenkins, Lorengo 11). In 1876, an Irish immigrant, Marcus Daly had come the Hill to evaluate silver mining prospects in Butte. After supervising operations at the Alice mine, Daly began to look for his own claim and purchased a one-third shard of the Anaconda silver mine with a future option to purchase the rest for $70,000, which he did in 1881. When a vein of copper was found assaying 55% copper, Daly began purchasing property adjacent to the Anaconda mine and soon became Butte’s second, but greatest, Copper King (Jenkins, Lorengo 15). In 1884 Daly completed the completed his first concentrator and smelter in the newly created town of Anaconda, 26 miles west of Butte. The Anaconda Mining Company, formed by Daly and his collaborators, even built a private railroad in order to transport ore from multiple mines in Butte to the processing facilities in Anaconda and held coal reserves and timber stands in order to fuel the smelters. It did not take long before the copper produced in southwest Montana was out-competing its rival in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. By 1889, copper production at Butte reached over 83,000 metric tons (Jenkins, Lorengo 16). Daly eventually became vice-president of the Amalgamated Copper Company by trading his $17,000,000 stake in the Anaconda for a quarter share and the title. This allowed for the consolidation of many of the claims on Butte Hill, which made extraction more efficient. Amalgamated was eventually dissolved in 1915, and Anaconda Copper Mining Co. came back on the scene. An arm of the Anaconda Mining Company built the enormous Washoe smelter in Anaconda in 1902, the stack of which can still be visited today (Jenkins, Lorengo 19). Irish Culture Marcus Daly was just the beginning of the Irish culture that can still be found in Butte today. From 1870-1890, the Irish were the most numerous European group in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, New York and the West. Irish culture tended to follow the mining booms for several reasons. Irish workers tended to seek stability and steadiness in their work. Wishing to maintain an enclave of family, ethnicity, religion and work was a goal of many Irish miners. One goal was to have a job that paid a decent wage and was steady enough to allow them to save for things that would offer security, such as property (Emmons 278). The mining industry tended to be transient working class, with miners following one boom after another. What made the Irish mining population appealing was their desire to stay in one place and develop their communities. Mine owners knew that by hiring Irish workers, they could have a steady source of employees that would offer them low turnover rates. The Butte Irish were no different. A tight-knit community began to form, with the help of Marcus Daly. Most of the Irish miners lived in places like Dublin Gulch or Corktown in boarding houses operated by and for Irish mines. By 1900, Butte was the most overwhelmingly Irish city in the United States with 90% of its Irish men working in the mining industry (Emmons 281). Butte mines were some of the most dangerous in the world, but Irish miners were more practical, making fewer mistakes than non-Irish miners and preferring a less risky work environment. Irish tended to care more about the safety of other Irish. Hiring forces for the mines recruited and networked with Irish associations that would help find members jobs and help keep those jobs in difficult times and also paid sick and death benefits (Emmons 292). Their practices came under scrutiny from newspapers and other ethnic groups. Daly was criticized for allowing ethnicity to control unions. The desire for stability that so many of the Irish held was reflected in their participation in the Butte Miners Union that pushed for an 8-hour workday and stabilization of the workforce (Emmons 294). What they wanted most was to create a small piece of Ireland in the States, and develop a strong cultural community. There is still a strong Irish presence in Butte today. Although mining has slowed nearly to a halt in the region compared with the late 19th century, the efforts of the early Irish immigrants to create strong communities and enclaves in the Butte area paid off. The annual celebration of St. Patrick’s Day is one of the largest celebrations in the country often drawing crowds of nearly 30,000 people to Butte. Environmental Impacts The prosperity in mining in Butte did not come without consequence. The scars from over a century worth of heavy mining can still be seen. By the mid-1980’s the vegetation in the Summit Valley was destroyed by over a dozen smelters that releasing noxious sulfur fumes into the air. During the height of the copper boom, the air was so thick and filled with smoke from the numerous smelters that in the middle of the day it would be difficult to see across the street (Jenkins, Lorengo 13). Silver Bow Creek provides the only drainage for Butte and is a part of the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. It therefore became the receiver of extremely high levels of sulfuric acid due to the oxidation of sulfidic rock exposed by all of the mining operations in Butte. Water was also drawn from it to run concentrators that would help reduce ores to more useful copper at the smelters. The concentrators themselves were sensitive to the acidic waters and had to be able to handle the corrosive water from the Silver Bow. After over 100 years of waste dumping in the headwaters of the Clark Fork River, the EPA deemed the entire basin the largest Superfund clean-up site in 1982; the extent of the damage to the river runs over 224 kilometers. This is not the only environmental impact that Butte’s mining heritage has left behind. In the mid-20th century, with the ore grades dropping and costs continuing to rise in the mining industry, The Anaconda Mining Company started the Berkeley Pit on the northeast side of Butte. In 1976 the mine was sold to the ARCO, and sold again in 1985 to Washington Corporation, who in turn sold it to ASARCO in 1989. The second largest open-pit mine in the United States, Berkeley produced copper, gold and silver in respectable quantities until it was shut down in 1982. Mining resumed for a short period of time in 1986 at the pit, but lasted just a short period of time. The Berkeley Pit is filled with extremely toxic water from surrounding underground mines. Its cleanup has produced jobs for residents of Butte, but is also a nasty scar on the landscape. The water in the pit was responsible for the deaths of 342 snow geese in 1995 that used the mile and a half wide body of water as a stopover on their migration route. Scientists study the water and although it seems no biotic organisms can survive the toxicity of the water, 142 organisms have been found in the pit. In early tests, even some of the chemical compounds found in the “giant cup of poison” have shown success in killing certain types of cancer cells. For now though, some of the only benefits that Butte will see from this environmental wasteland will be through the $2 admission charge as a tourist attraction. References Hudson, John C. (2002). Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Emmons, David. “An Aristocracy of Labor: The Irish Miners of Butte, 1880-1914.” Labor History 28.3 (1987): 275-306. Article First. ''Web. 3 June 2010. Jenkins, Robert E. and Jerry A. Lorengo. "Butte, Montana: Minerals, Mines, and History." ''Mineralogical Record 33.1 (2002): 6-69. Article First. Web 3 June 2010. http://www.butteamerica.com/birish.htm http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_697.html http://www.pitwatch.org/ http://meic.org/mining/mine_cleanup/berkeley-pit-butte http://www.mbmg.mtech.edu/mbmg-default.asp http://www.hcn.org/issues/49/1520 http://atlasobscura.com/place/berkeley-pit http://www.city-data.com/city/Butte-Silver-Bow-Montana.html http://www.montanamining.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit http://www.miningmuseum.org/minerslanguage.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/09pit-.html?_r=2 http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/pics/geo200/pct_irish.pdf